We Need To Completely Transform Our Agricultural Practices

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Giving Compass’ Take:

· In order to reduce the chances of exceeding a 2 degree Celsius increase in global temperature, the latest IPCC report suggests revolutionizing agricultural practices to reduce emissions and provide a greater food supply.

To tackle climate change, we’ll need to do more than eliminate emissions from power plants and cars. Humans now sprawl over more than 70% of the planet’s land surface (not counting the places that are still covered in ice). And what we do with land now—from how we grow crops to whether we keep forests standing—will determine whether we can avoid the worst impacts of climate change and what will happen to the food supply, says a new report from the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

“This report really underscores the importance and urgency of lands,” says Will Turner, senior vice president of global strategies at the nonprofit Conservation International. “What we do to protect and to restore land this generation will affect whether our children, and those they share the planet with, are going to suffer. . . . We can stop fossil fuel emissions tomorrow and still fail if the Amazon is cleared or Sumatra burns.”

More than 100 scientists looked at 7,000 studies to understand how human impacts on land are causing greenhouse gas emissions, how climate change is affecting our ability to produce food, and how changing what we do on farms and in forests can help fight climate change. They found that farming, forestry, and other human land use is responsible for 23% of global greenhouse gas emissions and that keeping global warming under 2 degrees Celsius will only happen if we reduce those emissions.

Some solutions are especially important. Protecting ecosystems that are already rich in carbon, like mangrove forests, rainforests, and peatlands, a type of carbon-filled wetland, is one key step. Unfortunately, many places are moving in the wrong direction: Deforestation in Brazil has surged 278% in the last year. Planting and restoring forests, as long as it happens in the right places and doesn’t interfere with food production, can sequester CO2 without waiting for the startups that are building the first carbon-sucking machines to scale up their technology. “Restoration of forests is the only technology that we have for absorbing CO2 that’s already in the atmosphere at scale,” says Turner.

ImpactAlpha’s New Revivalists series is highlighting “people, places and policies reviving entrepreneurship — and the American Dream.” Among the takeaways: the need for startup debt — not just equity — capital; temporary retail or manufacturing space to help founders launch quickly; an emphasis on operating revenues, rather than the next round of fundraising; and investors who look like, and can spot, underrepresented and underestimated founders.
In Cincinnati, for example, New Revivalist Derrick Braziel noticed that the people moving into vacant storefronts in the city’s Over-the-Rhine neighborhood “didn’t look anything like the local community that had lived there.” He co-founded Mortar to connect local entrepreneurs to small loans, pop-up spaces and technical assistance. In West Virginia’s coal country, Brandon Dennison’s Coalfield Develoment Corp. has spun off job-creating businesses in solar installation, sustainable agriculture and green construction.
One entrepreneur at the Economist’s event, Frederick Hutson, the founder of Pigeonly, might have been one of those underestimated founders. He got his idea for cutting the high cost of communications with inmates while serving his own four-year federal prison sentence for selling marijuana. Pigeonly enables families to make telephone calls and send photos, letters and greeting cards to those who are incarcerated.
Read the full article about the New Revivalists series and impact investing by David Bank at ImpactAlpha.

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